Clearing Up Space Quest's 25 Year Old Mystery

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Talking Space Quest, LucasArts, Sierra and ScumSoft.

By Kosta Andreadis

2014 is the Year of Adventure here at IGN, which means that we’ve spent the year revisiting as many classic adventure games from the ‘80s and ‘90s as possible. In the most recent feature, I covered the one-two sci-fi-fuelled punches that are Space Quest III and IV, and raised a question that Space Quest fans have been curious about for years.

Were the villains in the third game – ScumSoft – named in reference to LucasArts’ famous SCUMM engine?

After all, ScumSoft, as depicted in the game, were also game developers. Albeit evil futuristic ones. And at the time of Space Quest III’s release, the two biggest names when it came to adventure gaming were Sierra and LucasArts, so it’s easy to speculate.

Although it fails to deliver a cohesive narrative across the entire game, what it does do is insert game designers Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe as intergalactic software developers the Two Guys from Andromeda into the game’s story. After being captured by evil software company ScumSoft and forced to develop games against their will, it’s up to Roger Wilco to track them down to the pirate moon of Pestulon and rescue them.

Is ScumSoft a thinly veiled jab at LucasArts and its SCUMM engine? Is it a reference to Sierra itself and the sheer amount of games the company was producing at the time?

I should also point out that - thanks to the perils of fact-checking things on the internet - ScumSoft was originally spelt with two ‘m’s’ in the article, adding even more fuel to the fire.

So, who better to solve this mystery, than the Two Guys from Andromeda themselves? I caught up with series co-creator and one of Two Guys, Scott Murphy, to talk about ScumSoft and what it was like working during the golden era of adventure gaming at Sierra. And plenty more, besides. Enjoy!

On the name ScumSoft

Scott Murphy: The ScumSoft company name was my idea. In Space Quest, ScumSoft is spelled with one “m” as one word. I’d come up with it as a name for my own software company before we started Space Quest 3, which is where it’s first mentioned publicly. It was too good not to use as Space Quest 3 came together. I even own the ‘scumsoft.net’ domain but haven’t done anything with it yet. I have letterhead somewhere in my boxes of crap in storage that I’d used to use when writing letters to my nephews in the days before email. Yes, there was a time.

On the depiction of the ScumSoft offices in Space Quest III

Scott Murphy: But it’s also a reference to the evil side of what Sierra was becoming at the time, which is evidenced by the cubicles and catwalk scene in Space Quest 3 showing Ken Williams and his then henchman (Rick Cavin). They’re both shown walking along the catwalks cracking whips on the people in the extremely tiny cubicles below. When he’d bring people through for the ‘dog and pony shows’ (as I like to call them), Cavin would insist that I show them the ‘catwalk and cubicles’ scene, because he thought it was so cool that he was in the game. If you see yourself in that role and are proud of the depiction, well, enough said really.

Catwalks and cubicles.

On the other guys: LucasArts and its SCUMM engine

Scott Murphy: To this day I haven’t played Maniac Mansion and I didn’t really hear about the SCUMM system until after my tenure at Sierra had officially come to an end in January of 1999. By then I was sick to death of the industry. I was burned out. We worked in a vacuum in Oakhurst and we were too busy working on game after game after game to spend any time reading the few articles in magazines about other companies. We were primarily interested in how our games and others from Sierra were being written about. Back then, reviews usually needed a three month lead time since it was print media only.

On LucasArts games and their friendly rivalry

Scott Murphy: The only LucasArts games I’ve played are the first two Monkey Islands’. I’ve mentioned it enough that I believe it has gotten back to Ron Gilbert. He was kind enough to give SpaceVenture (the current game being developed by the Two Guys from Andromeda) a shout out on Twitter during our Kickstarter campaign. In social media and interviews I’ve listed both Monkey Island 1 and 2 as two of my favourite games. Monkey Island 3 though, not so much because it was evident Gilbert was not a part of it, if any, and it showed. The first two though, were very funny and well done.

They even had a dig at Sierra about our death sequences. I forget which one it’s in. It’s been a long time since I played them. It’s in a place where you can make Guybrush step off the edge of a plateau and a window in our style pops up. They have a brief timer and then he flies back up and onto his feet and they make some dig about not killing players. I thought it was damn funny and clever. We always thought we had a friendly rivalry with the people at LucasArts. From what little we knew we assumed the atmosphere and work environment there was nothing at all like Sierra. We even played softball with them. We also traded our games back and forth.

LucasArts has been fielding softball-playing robots all along!

On the origin of the whole confusion and non-controversy

Scott Murphy: I’d never heard of people thinking ScumSoft was a dig at SCUMM or LucasArts until quite literally this year. I saw it mentioned on social media somewhere. I was honestly sadly surprised anyone would think that. It was a different world back in the days before blogs, as it feels like 99% percent of game media is now internet based. It seems people are now looking for, and in some cases, inventing dirt. The thing is that back then people bought both company’s games. Sierra and LucasArts. And they liked them for the uniqueness each possessed.

On the lack of a clear narrative drive in Space Quest III

Scott Murphy: As for a lack of a ‘cohesive narrative’ as you say, we never really had a grand franchise plan. Space Quest was a creation that came out of the blue. Working on the first game we didn’t know if there was going to be a Space Quest 2 or 3 or 4. We never thought that far into the future because we didn’t know for sure if the first game was going to ship. We didn’t call it Space Quest 1 because we never imagined there’d be a Space Quest 2.

To be fair, the game DOES let you pilot this towering mech. What more do you want?

On making the first Space Quest game

Scott Murphy: Space Quest was the first AGI game that Roberta didn’t author. At that time (around 1986) Sierra was struggling to keep the doors open and lights on. Mark Crowe and I had finished up on The Black Cauldron and had recovered from all the hours we’d put in and spent away from our families. We came up with our little idea closed up in a little office, made our four room working demo, and then dragged Ken in out of the hallway to see it and find out if he’d let us run with it. It was the anti-King’s Quest. We knew there had to be a different audience out there for what we were thinking and liked. He liked what he saw and, quite honestly, he had nothing to lose by green lighting our effort.

On creating sequels and working at Sierra

Scott Murphy: From then on, after the first one Ken would just show up and say, “I need a new Space Quest,” and we’d try to meet the unrealistic deadlines he’d promise the board. The bottom line is that we tried to have the most fun we could making our games in what often wasn’t a fun environment. We tried to stay in our own zone. We just thought if the games made us laugh they’d make other people laugh. We had no idea how many we’d end up making. We just hoped for the best.

Meta.

A final note on Sierra’s ‘henchman’, the golden era, and Ken Williams

Scott Murphy: For the record, other than Ken being in denial about the things his henchman did on his behalf, we get along quite well now. We realise those hard times were the ‘golden days’ of Sierra. It was hard work but it felt special. I’ll always think back on it kindly. We were all in it together and Ken was doing his best to keep paychecks cashing and bills paid, and he did it somehow in that industry environment. It was impressive. I saw and heard some of it firsthand since we were working on The Black Cauldron at his house. It’s just that when the company started growing again it turned into ScumSoft and the golden days of Sierra were over. That still saddens me. Yes, some good games came out from that era which was definitely great for the fans, but Sierra wasn’t the same place for me. Not by a long shot.

I don’t want to put words into anyone’s mouth. When adventure games were going away from Sierra and I was laid off it was a mercy killing. But I will still fondly remember those special times when we struggled to get games out, when we started Space Quest. It was an awesome feeling of accomplishment, and I’ve got a lot of great friends all over this rock because of those times. Royalties ended a long, long time ago, but the friendships with fans, backers and fellow designers we gained will last a lifetime.

Hey! Stuntflogger was a great game!

Thanks to Scott Murphy for his time and insight. Stay tuned for our interview covering SpaceVenture, the new game from the Two Guys from Andromeda, and the spiritual successor to Space Quest.